The present invention described herein relates to a semiconductor manufacturing equipment and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method of cleaning a substrate using a laser shock wave.
Generally, a semiconductor substrate is manufactured through a thin film deposition process, an etching process, and a cleaning process. Particularly, the cleaning process removes residence materials or particles that are created during the manufacturing process of the semiconductor substrate.
The cleaning process may be classified into wet cleaning and dry cleaning. The wet cleaning cleans the substrate using chemical agents. A large amount of the chemical agents used in the wet cleaning causes the environment contamination. In addition, the wet cleaning has limitations in that the work speed is low and a size of the equipment is large.
Meanwhile, the dry cleaning cleans the substrate using plasma or laser without damaging the substrate. The dry cleaning using the plasma cleans the substrate by allowing radical to act with polluting materials on a surface of the substrate. The dry cleaning using the laser removes foreign substances on the surface of the substrate without damaging the substrate by applying laser shock waves.
In more detail, the dry cleaning using the laser focuses laser beams to generate the shock waves above the substrate and the foreign substances are removed by the shock waves. However, when the shock waves are generated, plums or residence beams are generated together with the shock waves. The plums or residence beams cause the damage of the substrate.
In order to avoid the above limitations, a mask is disposed above the substrate to prevent the plums or residence beams from being incident on the substrate. However, when cleaning the substrate, only the substrate rotates with a focal point of the laser and the mask fixed and thus the plums and residence beams are continually incident on a specific portion of the mask. This results in the damage of the mask and splinters of the mask fall down on the substrate to contaminate the substrate.